


Tragical Romance and All

by grasslandgirl



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - To All the Boys I've Loved Before Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anne is a hopeless romantic, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Marilla and Matthew adopted Jerry and Ruby as well as Anne, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Shirbert, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, jerry is kitty, josie's a bitch as always, lets hope i actually finish it, matthew died :((, rated Teen for language and teen shenanigans, ruby is margot, this is going to be a monster fic i can already tell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 18:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasslandgirl/pseuds/grasslandgirl
Summary: the TATBILB/ AWAE Shirbert fic we've all been waiting for-"Anne would later attest, loudly and to anyone who would listen, that her response to finding out her secret love letter had been sent out was the response that any rational person would have.She fainted.Late that night, when she was running over the terrible events of the day in her head for the millionth time, she realized she had already made her decision. That she had decided when he first asked.Fuck. She was going to fake-date Gilbert Blythe. Her life really was going to shit."





	Tragical Romance and All

**Author's Note:**

> Hello All! thank you so much for reading this, it's my first attempt at any real fic writing, so please be kind but honest! I love Anne With an E, as well as To All the Boys I've Loved Before, and it seemed only logical to write an au for Gilbert and Anne- these two dummys would TOTALLY pull something like this. Please enjoy and I THRIVE on commentary and other peoples' thoughts on my work so PLEASE PLEASE comment, kudos, and share! Thank you so much for reading!

Anne couldn’t believe their gym teacher was making them run laps during the first week of school. It was too hot and too soon after summer break to be running. Even if her best friend Diana was in the class with her.

“Dearest Diana,” she said, “there is something terribly unromantic about being forced to run in a circle on such a beautiful day.” Diana smiled at Anne as they continued running. Well, technically what they were doing was more like jogging, or fast walking than running, but their gym teacher was distracted, and the girls weren’t going to run if they didn’t absolutely have to. The day was sunny but breezy, with the trees and flowers in their last moments of glorious green before fall came into full swing. _Really_ , Anne thought, _my teachers should be happy I show up to class at all, given how the trees and flowers are calling to me_.

“Anne!” Someone called, and the girl froze mid step, thinking for a second that the plants around her had actually started to speak. “Anne Shirley!” A distinctly male voice called again, and she realized it was coming from behind her, not from the waving leaves and soft grass. Diana had stopped a few steps ahead of her, a confused expression on her face due to Anne’s abrupt stop, and Anne turned a little to see who was calling out to her.

“Shirley!”

It was Gilbert Blythe. The scourge of her life. The boy who was the only one challenging her for valedictorian, who had introduced himself to her by pulling on her hair and calling her _‘Carrots,’_ who was currently dating one of her middle school tormentors, Josie Pye.

And he was running to catch up with her and Diana in the middle of 6th period gym

Needless to say, Anne was a little baffled.

“Shirley,” he repeated, a little out of breath, once he finally caught up to where she and Diana were standing on the track. “I need to talk to you.” Anne shared a glance with Diana, but her friend’s equally bewildered expression didn’t clarify anything for her. “Alone?” He amended, looking between the two girls.

Diana knew Anne’s feelings towards Blythe, and was loath to leave her alone with him, but Anne gave her a small nod, and she replied, “Alright, if you say so. I’m going to finish this lap and I’ll catch up with you?” Anne nodded again, unusually quiet, and Diana started back around the track alone.

Now that they were alone, Gilbert fell awkwardly quiet, and Anne was forced to finally break the silence after a few too many tense seconds. “You had something to tell me?”

She swore he blushed a little, and he pulled something out of his back pocket. It was some piece of paper? “Shirley, here’s the thing… I really appreciate this, and I think it’s really flattering that you think I’m too smart for my own good; but Josie and I just went through a really rough breakup and I’m not looking for-”

“Wait what?” Anne’s mouth had finally caught up to what Gilbert was saying.

He paused in his monologue, searching her face hesitantly. “Your letter?” And with closer scrutiny, she realized he was, indeed, holding a letter. More specifically, a letter she had written. To him. In middle school. About how she was in love with him.

 _Fuck_.

~

Anne would later attest, loudly and to anyone who would listen, that her response to finding out her secret love letter had been sent out was the response that any rational person would have.

She fainted.

Writing letters was a habit Anne had picked up from reading far too many Victorian-era novels, having fallen in love with the idea of passionate, handwritten declarations of everlasting love, sent across countries and oceans to reach one’s true love. Let it never be said that Anne Shirley wasn’t a romantic, and so when she was struck by her first soul-wrenching crush, she decided to pour her feelings out onto paper. It became a habit for her to use letter-writing to let all her feelings loose, so that she could more easily move past them. Over the course of her young life, Anne had written four love letters, but hadn’t ever sent any of them. Until now.

The first was to Roy, from model UN in the fifth grade. He was one of the few people at her school that was nice to her, and he seemed straight out of one of her books, a dark haired dramatic prince, come to save her from her life.

Not long after their brief elementary school affair (which consisted of her pining and him smiling at her from across the classroom), however, Anne left her old foster family and was adopted by the Cuthberts. She never saw Roy again, but she got a real, loving family in the trade, so she wasn’t overly bothered by it.

The second letter was to Gilbert. Despite their rough beginning, he had apologized for calling her names, and they formed a friendly academic rivalry over the course of the 7th grade, which all came crashing down at Moody Spurgeon’s party at the end of the school year.

It was Anne’s first boy-girl party, and she was coerced into playing spin the bottle with all the others, much to her chagrin. The bottle landed on Gilbert, and he was her first kiss, sweet and quick and just magical enough to fuel Anne’s childish fantasies. She held onto the crush for most of the summer, but it all came crashing down when he came back to the eighth grade going steady with Josie Pye, who had made it her life’s mission to make Anne’s life hell. The crush didn’t last much longer after that.

The third letter was to Cole, whom she made friends with her in art class and who took her- as friends- to her freshman homecoming. He was sweet, and soft spoken, and understood her artistic soul, but the crush quickly faded not long after she wrote the letter. They stayed close friends, but she quickly became too busy with academics to bother with love. Which ended up being for the best, because she found out sophomore year that he was gay.

The fourth- and most recent- letter was to Charlie Sloan, her next door neighbor. He was also her sister’s newly _ex_ -boyfriend. Besides perhaps Diana, Charlie became one of her first real friends after she started living with the Cuthberts, and she hadn’t realized that she felt anything more for him until he and her sister, Ruby, started going out last year.

Ruby, along with her brother Jerry, were also adopted by the Cuthberts- siblings Marilla and Matthew. Neither of the Cuthberts ever married or had children of their own, but had realized as they got older that they wanted children in their lives. They had adopted Ruby first, Anne a year later, and Jerry a year after that. All three were within a few years of each other in age, with Ruby being the eldest at two years Anne’s senior, and Jerry a year younger than Anne.

The three got along surprisingly well, despite their differences, and the family was very close. Matthew had died when Anne was a freshman in high school, leaving all four of them heartbroken, and Ruby had just left this year for college abroad in Canada. She had broken up with Charlie before she left though, not wanting to tie either of them down or ruin their relationship with long distance.

Charlie still lived next door, and he and Anne were still friends, but it was weird with Ruby gone, and weirder with Anne fighting her feelings tooth and nail. Hence, the letter.

~

“Shirley? Anne!”

Blythe was calling her name again, Anne thought dimly, blinking her eyes against the glaring light. When she opened her eyes, she realized he wasn’t just calling to her. He was leaning right over her, his face far too close to hers, thank you very much, and shaking her shoulder a little.

“What happened,” she muttered, sitting up and rubbing a hand against her suddenly-aching head.

“You fainted.”

“Oh.” And then it all came rushing back. The letters- her secret, personal, love letters- had somehow gotten out and mailed. “Shit.” Gilbert chuckled, a little nervously, still scanning her face.

“Stop staring at me,” she muttered, turning away from him. That’s when her eyes caught him, _Charlie Sloan_ , the recipient of her fourth letter, standing at the edge of the track, staring at her and Blythe sitting in close proximity.

The worst thing? He had a piece of paper identical to Gilbert’s in his hand.

 _Fuck_ , she thought, not for the first time.

And then- again- she did what any rational young woman would do when faced with her situation. She swung Gilbert down onto the track, straddled him, and kissed him. He grunted a little in surprise when she laid one on him, but then, much to her shock, he kissed her back. She pulled away abruptly, not having the time to think through what just happened, said “thanks,” and ran away. Past Gilbert, still frozen face up on the track, past Charlie, whose mouth was hanging open in utter shock, and into the school building. Literally running away from her problems.

It wasn’t turning out to be a good day for Anne Shirley Cuthbert, to say the least.

~

She ran home as soon as seventh period ended, having successfully avoided both Gilbert and Charlie for the rest of the school day, and raced up to her room. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, shit! Fuck!” Anne dug around her room in a craze, but could not find the old blue dress box she had kept her letters in.

The box was a gift from Matthew, not long after he and Marilla adopted her, a beautiful dress he had seen her fawn over when they had first gone shopping for her new things. It was blue and had just the right amount of flounce, and despite the fact that she had long since outgrown it, Anne still kept the dress in the back of her closet. She had kept her secret letters in the box the dress had come in.

That was, she had until now.

The box was missing, her letters were sent out, and her life was in shambles. _Great_.

Somewhere downstairs, the doorbell rang, and she heard Jerry, who had gotten home not long after she had, answer the door. Normally, Anne would race downstairs to see who was visiting, but right now she was too preoccupied by the fact that her entire life was falling apart.

“Anne!” she vaguely heard Jerry call from downstairs, but chose to ignore him, deciding instead to dig through the floor of her closet- again- in the hopes that she had missed her box the first time around. “Anne!” Jerry shouted again, and this time she heard him tromping up the stairs to her room. “Charlie says he wants to talk to you.”

Anne froze, not for the first time that day, and finally told her little brother, “You didn’t see me.” She opened her window, stepped out onto the side of the roof, and jumped down into a bush on the ground. And then she was gone, running away for the second time that day.

She ran all the way to her favorite cafe, which wasn’t actually that far, and sat down at the counter. She ordered a slice of the cherry pie, her favorite. The cafe was right next door to her adoptive mother Marilla’s bakery, and they got almost all their pastries and baked goods fresh from there everyday. Honestly, she could probably get some for free next door, or even find some older sweets back at the house that Marilla had brought home, but Anne didn’t want to face the scrutiny and barrage of questions from her adoptive mother if she had gone into the bakery requesting solace via sugar as soon as school ended. It was bad enough that the waitresses here would probably tell on her anyway- she didn’t want to have to explain her entire predicament to Marilla quite yet.

 _It’s on days like this I really miss Matthew_ , Anne thought, trying to fight back the tears building behind her eyes. She loved Marilla, Jerry, and Ruby, she did, but none of them were kindred spirits in the same way Matthew had been. He would have listened to her without judgement, and even if he couldn’t help, he would find a way to make her feel better.

“Shirley?” It was the voice of Gilbert Blythe- _again_ \- that broke her out of her thoughts. She spun around on her stool to find him, sitting there two seats down, looking at her with an infuriating expression of concern. She pursed her lips, looking away again, and blinked her eyes quickly. Anne had nothing against crying, she did it fairly regularly and about nothing in particular, but she had no interest in crying in front of Gilbert Blythe, of all people. He seemed to pick up on the fact that she didn’t want to talk about why she was crying alone in a cafe, and instead picked at his food.

“How’d you know I was here?”

He glanced up at her, and looked away again. He was always doing that, she realized, catching quick looks at her and looking away. She wished he’d decide whether he wanted to meet her eye or not already. “I uh, went by your house and your little brother- Jerry?- told me you’d probably be here.”

“That little snake,” she muttered, mostly under her breath.

“And I, uh-” Blythe kept talking, not having noticed her cursing her adopted twerp of a brother. “I just wanted to reiterate- from earlier- that while your letter was sweet, I-”

Anne cut him off, “I don’t want to date you, Gilbert Blythe.” He looked equal parts offended and relieved at her outburst.

“You say that,” he said- but he was smirking now- and Anne remembered all of a sudden how much she hated his smirk. Especially at her expense. “But you kinda… _said_ something different. Out there, on the track.”

 _Shit_. Anne did her best to fight off her rising blush- her hair was red enough, did her face really have to match?- to little avail. “I did… _that_ , not because I like you,” she answered, “but because I didn’t want somebody else to think I liked them.” _So there_.

His brow furrowed a little. “Why did you need someone to think you didn’t like them? And more importantly, who is this mysterious person?”

“I don’t have to answer that!” Anne huffed, turning back to her pie.

“But if you don’t, I’m just going to assume you have a huge secret crush on me.” Blythe shrugged, infuriatingly casual. “Your choice.”

Anne grit her teeth, turning back towards him and staring him down. To her surprise, he finally met her stare and held it. Finally, she gave up. “Fine. Whatever. It’s Charlie.”

“Sloane? Your neighbor? I thought he was dating your sister, Ruby?”

“ _Dated_ ,” she corrected, “they broke up when Ruby left for school at the end of the summer.”

“Why would he think you like him, though?”

Anne paused. “He _may or may not_ have also received a letter. From me.”

She didn’t know what she expected from Gilbert Blythe, but it wasn’t for him to laugh a little in disbelief and quip, “You sent two guys love letters? Damn, a guy thinks he’s special.”

And as with everything Blythe seemed to do today, he made Anne half angry and half want to laugh. “Well, technically, I wrote _four_ letters; so don’t go getting a big head, Blythe.”

He laughed harder at that, and Anne had to stifle a matching giggle. His laughter was contagious, that wasn’t her fault! “Damn, Shirley, you’re a player.”

~

When he realized Anne had walked- well, technically, ran- there, Gilbert offered her a ride back to her house in his jeep. She accepted, but only because she had already ran too much for one day.

“Thanks, uh, for the ride,” she said, once they had pulled up to her house.

“What’re you gonna tell Sloane?” He asked, propping his elbow up on the top of his seat so he could turn his body to face her.

She pursed her lips- he had no right to ask her that- but she felt oddly inclined to be honest. “I don’t know.” And with that power line, she got out of the car and started up the steps to her house.

“Wait, Shirley!” Gilbert called for what felt like the millionth time that day. He clambered out of the car and ran up to meet her, standing halfway between her house and the road. “What if… what if you didn’t tell him?”

She blinked. _Ok, so maybe Gilbert Blythe wasn’t so intelligent after all_. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, uh...” He raised his hand and ran it through his hair. “What if we uh, let him think that we’re actually together? And not just him- everybody. You get Sloane off your back until you figure out your game plan, and I get a reason to keep Josie at arm’s length. Everybody wins.”

Anne gaped at him. Fake dating? That was his big plan?

She wanted to say, ‘ _as if I’d let anyone think I would date you! I’d rather go in there and tell Charlie the truth right now than pretend to date you!_ ’

What she said was, “Can I think about it?

Gilbert nodded, got back in his car, and drove away. Anne tried not to notice how he looked back at her, just once, before leaving.

Late that night, when she was running over the terrible events of the day in her head for the millionth time, she realized she had already made her decision. That she had decided when he first asked.  
_Fuck_. She was going to fake-date Gilbert Blythe. Her life really _was_ going to shit.

**Author's Note:**

> look, I know in the canon that Ruby has a MONSTER crush on gil and while i'd love to keep that in this au as well... it is called an Alternate Universe for a reason, and having Ruby's crush be on/ having her previously date Gilbert would majorly change the relationship I'm going for with both anne/ruby and anne/gilbert, so. deal with it.  
> fun fact! the reason I chose charlie for the josh-character is that in the AoGG books he actually Proposes to anne (she turns him down. obviously.) and the Roy (kenny) character is also from the books, he's someone anne meets in college at redmond and THINKS she loves him before realizing its all fantasy :)  
> ANYWAY! thank you so much for reading, I THRIVE on comments and commentary so PLEASE don't be shy and yell at me in the comments or give the fic some kudos, it'll make my day I swear! Hopefully I'll be out with a second chapter soon, though my inclination to write comes and goes pretty quickly.  
> please also come yell at me on my tumblr, also @grasslandgirl - the tag for this au is the succinct "awae au" if you want to see some of my inspiration for this fic!


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